Part 48 (1/2)

GEORGE SANTAYANA

he gar noy enhergeia zohe

This Dover edition, first published in 1982, is an unabridged republication of volume five of _The Life of Reason; or The Phases of Human Progress_, originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y., in 1905.

CONTENTS

REASON IN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

TYPES AND AIMS OF SCIENCE

Science still young.--Its miscarriage in Greece.--Its timid reappearance in modern times.--Distinction between science and myth.--Platonic status of hypothesis.--Meaning of verification.--Possible validity of myths.--Any dreamed-of thing might be experienced.--But science follows the movement of its subject-matter.--Moral value of science.--Its continuity with common knowledge.--Its intellectual essence.--Unity of science.--In existence, judged by reflection, there is a margin of waste.--Sciences converge from different points of origin.--Two chief kinds of science, physics and dialectic.--Their mutual implication.--Their cooperation.--No science _a priori_.--Role of criticism. Pages 3-38

CHAPTER II

HISTORY

History an artificial memory.--Second sight requires control.--Nature the theme common to various memories.--Growth of legend.--No history without doc.u.ments.--The aim is truth.--Indirect methods of attaining it.--Historical research a part of physics.--Verification here indirect.--Futile ideal to survey all facts.--Historical theory.--It is arbitrary.--A moral critique of the past is possible.--How it might be just.--Transition to historical romance.--Possibility of genuine epics.--Literal truth abandoned.--History exists to be transcended.--Its great role. Pages 39-68

CHAPTER III

MECHANISM

Recurrent forms in nature.--Their discovery makes the flux calculable.--Looser principles tried first.--Mechanism for the most part hidden.--Yet presumably pervasive.--Inadequacy of consciousness.--Its articulation inferior to that of its objects.--Science consequently r.e.t.a.r.ded, and speculation rendered necessary.--Dissatisfaction with mechanism partly natural, and partly artificial.--Bia.s.sed judgments inspired by moral inertia.--Positive emotions proper to materialism.--The material world not dead nor ugly, nor especially cruel.--Mechanism to be judged by its fruits Pages 69-94

CHAPTER IV

HESITATIONS IN METHOD

Mechanism restricted to one-half of existence.--Men of science not speculative.--Confusion in semi-moral subjects.--”Physic of metaphysic begs defence.”--Evolution by mechanism.--Evolution by ideal attraction.--If species are evolved they cannot guide evolution.--Intrusion of optimism.--Evolution according to Hegel.--The conservative interpretation.--The radical one.--Megalomania.--Chaos in the theory of mind.--Origin of self-consciousness.--The notion of spirit.--The notion of sense.--Compet.i.tion between the two.--The rise of scepticism Pages 95-125

CHAPTER V

PSYCHOLOGY

Mind reading not science.--Experience a reconstruction.--The honest art of education.--Arbitrary readings of the mind.--Human nature appealed to rather than described.--Dialectic in psychology.--Spinoza on the pa.s.sions.--A principle of estimation cannot govern events.--Scientific psychology a part of biology.--Confused attempt to detach the psychic element.--Differentia of the psychic.--Approach to irrelevant sentience.--Perception represents things in their practical relation to the body.--Mind the existence in which form becomes actual.--Attempt at idealistic physics.--a.s.sociation not efficient.--- It describes coincidences.--Understanding is based on instinct and expressed in dialectic.--Suggestion a fancy name for automatism, and will another.--Double attachment of mind to nature.--Is the subject-matter of psychology absolute being?--Sentience is representable only in fancy.--The conditions and objects of sentience, which are not sentience, are also real.--Mind knowable and important in so far as it represents other things Pages 126-166